


Three Days in Uberwald

by anxiousgoat



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Grand Sneer (Discworld), Memories, Rare Pairings, Sexy Old Person, Tea, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24630805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiousgoat/pseuds/anxiousgoat
Summary: An aging Vetinari thinks back fondly to the only person for whom he has ever felt more than the vaguest stirrings of physical desire.Written for my dear friend Sarah, who deserves all the weird-ass stories she wants, and requested a story in which "Granny Weatherwax travels back in time and has an erotic affair with a young Vetinari."
Relationships: Lord Vetinari/Granny Weatherwax
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Three Days in Uberwald

Lord Vetinari lies recumbent on his black-clad, narrow bed in the small windowless room which leads, via a door concealed by a neat and precise painting, from the Oblong Office. He does have a bedroom, and, contrary to popular belief (or at least the belief of Commander Vimes), does use it, but since it contains several cupboards and is large enough for more than two people to stand in shoulder-to-shoulder, there are occasions when he finds it distractingly baroque.

It has been a satisfactory day so far. He has persuaded two of Ankh-Morpork’s largest Guilds into abandoning a partnership and returning to their usual far more beneficial position of guarded neutrality. He has secured the loyalty of the City Watch for the foreseeable future by providing yet another new dart board for them, and he has won his two-hundred-and-thirty-second game of Thud in a row.

Now, he crosses his hands over his chest and permits his mind to wander. It is strange, he muses, that as the years pass and he prepares himself to meet the personified skeleton with the scythe, he finds himself thinking back to his youth more and more frequently. Perhaps it is the way of old men.

There have been few people who have mattered to Havelock Vetinari in what might be termed a personal sense, but two of them have been women. One, of course, is the woman who devises the _Ankh-Morpork Times_ crossword puzzle, with whom he enjoys a delightful rivalry in which they are perfectly evenly matched.

The second is Mistress Weatherwax.

They have met only once, though that meeting lasted three days. He had been on his Grand Sneer at the time, wet behind the ears and thinking it made him experienced. He’d certainly been _more_ experienced by the time he had returned to Ankh-Morpork, and some of the experience had even been of use.

Mistress Weatherwax had never explained to him who she was, apparently feeling that the single word “witch” was a sufficient introduction. However, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork wields considerable power, and once Havelock had achieved that position he had made it his business to put a few subtle enquiries in motion. He had been mildly surprised to learn that Mistress Weatherwax was only in her mid-thirties, rather than the mature woman he had met, and he had not taken his enquiries any further.

So now, he simply remembers the astonishing three days when he finally gained some understanding of what the other students of the Assassins Guild giggled about in the dormitories and why they thought their fumblings together, never as private as they believed, were so important.

Mistress Weatherwax was, in short, a revelation.

Lord Vetinari closes his eyelids to better picture the moment when he first encountered her, striding towards the village from the direction of the mountains in a manner that might better be described as “subjugating” than “walking”. He had given her his most urbanely polite bow and enquired as to whether he could assist her.

“What?” she had snapped. “Are you trying to say I’m lost, boy? Do I look like I’m lost? Lost!”

And she had brushed past him quite rudely.

It was as though he had been doused in cold water except that he had been energised and thrilled rather than wet and annoyed. He had hastened after her, first to apologise for his foolishness and then to offer her a cup of tea. This had caused her to swing round and stare into his face in silence for some time, then sniff loudly and accept, though in a manner that suggested she was doing him a favour rather than the other way around.

Havelock had been lost from that moment. What a magnificent woman! First she had told him he was making the tea wrong and had given him detailed instructions on how to do it correctly, but criticised him even as he followed her directions to the letter. Then she had complained that it tasted wrong because of what she called “foreign water”. And then, well, then…

Lord Vetinari’s chest begins to rise and fall more quickly as he remembers what came next. 

There had been more words, of course, and many more cups of tea. But his main memory of those three days is of the things they did together in the luxuriously appointed bedroom his host had insisted on giving him. Mistress Weatherwax had been over eighty, but she had a vivid imagination, apparently boundless energy, and the body, Havelock considered, of a goddess.

(Not an actual goddess, though. They tended to inspire deep terror rather than deep passion.)

He had always known it would not last forever, though, and one morning Mistress Weatherwax had drunk a large cup of tea and then simply faded away in front of his eyes. Havelock was saddened but not surprised. She was the only person for whom he had ever felt more than the vaguest stirrings of physical desire, and he wasn’t entirely certain that he could have coped with more than three days of her presence, even so. He also does not think that she is the romantic type any more than he is himself.

Mistress Weatherwax had been, as so often during those three days, naked when she had vanished from his bedroom. Havelock had had her clothes laundered, then packed them meticulously into the bottom of his trunk. An Ankh-Morpork seamstress had, on his return, made them into three sheets and quite a lot of blankets. There had been plenty of material in the clothes: getting to the final layer of Mistress Weatherwax’s clothing for the first time had been the sort of triumph that was all the sweeter for the effort it took to get there.

Lord Vetinari gives a very small sigh and sits up. He does not need to consult the clock in the Oblong Office to know that he has been supine upon his narrow bed, with its old black sheets and thin blankets, for precisely twenty minutes. He straightens the bedclothes with careful hands, then leaves the room, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. The memories are pleasant, but it is time for him to be the Patrician again.


End file.
